


little lamb

by riyku



Series: Skam Sunday [26]
Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 19:00:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14087556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riyku/pseuds/riyku
Summary: The subject has green eyes.





	little lamb

**Author's Note:**

> hello! happy sunday! 
> 
> it's been a little while since i tinkered in the sunday series, but i've been working on some longer stuff for you guys, posting in the weeks to come, and i'm gonna try to crawl back onto this here wagon starting now.
> 
> this one is based very, very loosely on that 'FBI agent who lives in your computer' meme that's been going around off and on, only it's a shade creepier and darker and a lot less funny. it's also fairly interpretable, so think of the ending as a choose-your-own-adventure book.
> 
> massive, incredibly massive thanks to tebtosca, who workshopped the hell out of this thing with me. it's because of her that it makes any sense at all. she also gave me the title, nixed from a Gershwin tune, "Someone to Watch Over Me."

Bu1!$Eye

Fuck. That's not right. Even tries again.

8ul!$3ye

A box appears on Even's screen, flashing at the edges. One more shot at it and he'll have to call in for a reset. Even hates calling, would much prefer to hack his way through it, but that kind of behavior is frowned upon. Ironic, considering.

Bu!l$Ey3

Password accepted. Access granted. A few more keystrokes and a new window opens up, a live feed of a dimly lit room. It's small and there's an NWA poster on the wall, some cutouts from magazines, an unmade bed. Could be a dorm or a co-op. The subject needs a better laptop. A cam with higher resolution would be nice. Whatever. Even's gotten more out of less before.

Off screen, a door opens, light fanning in for a moment before going gritty and dark again. It turns out the sheets on the bed are blue, the blanket striped. Muted footsteps because the sound is as shitty as the visual and then the subject walks into the frame. Tall and slender, blond hair curled around his ears, the crucifixion on his chest in the form of a worn out t-shirt. He's hardly more than a kid, but then again, Even isn't one to talk. 

"Bullseye," Even says, and cracks open an energy drink, sinks further down into his desk chair and settles in for the long haul. On his screen, the subject does the same. Even's drinking Ultra Red tonight. His favorite.

\- - -

It's three days before Even takes the file on the subject from his desk drawer. Three fourteen-hour shifts. Even's already spent more time with him than he has with his mother in the last year.

Even finally opens it. He rarely does so before he's given himself enough time to build his own first impression. Another small irony, that in an organization built around zeros and ones, pixels and motherboards, the background on the subjects always get handed down on paper. 

He pages through it, coffee at his elbow, one eye on the screen. Three glossy color photos. School transcripts. A brief rundown of the subject's home life, current roommates, family and friends, everyday routine.

The subject is smart, keeps to himself. He isn't a joiner, but he is well socialized. He's on track to go to med school, is building himself a strong foundation in biochemistry at the university. Professors like him, judging from the emails Even hacks.

There are a few scuff marks on his record. Underage drinking. Truancy. One act of petty vandalism. The latter probably had a lot to do with the former. All of this happened between the ages of sixteen and seventeen. Everybody goes through a phase. Even could interpret this in a few different ways. A record that is too clean often means that it's not clean enough.

His internet search history is a snoozer. Journal articles for school, Netflix. A slight preference for jerking off to amateur porn. A slightly more significant preference for daddykink. He doesn't trust Wikipedia for research. More Netflix.

Bank accounts are equally as boring. The subject has a father whose love shows up on the left side of the decimal point on the first day of every month like clockwork.

"Hey." Mikael drops his messenger bag beside Even's chair, and Even stretches, cracks his neck. "Anything I need to know about?"

Even glances at the time readout at the bottom of his screen. This room doesn't have any windows, only the mellow blue light from a row of computer screens housed in separate cubicles. Morning always comes as a surprise to him. "He's overslept," Even murmurs.

"With any luck, he'll sleep straight through microbiology. I've only had to sit through one class, but that professor is painful." Mikael ties his long hair back, settles into the cubicle beside Even's.

Even politely averts his eyes as Mikael types in his password, then begins double checking all the things Even has already double checked. Before he logs off, Even accesses the subject's phone, taps a few keys and activates its alarm clock.

"You're an asshole," Mikael says, matter-of-fact.

"It's more interesting this way," Even says.

\- - -

The subject is pulling an all-nighter. He types sixty-five words per minute and with ninety percent accuracy. Faster than that, and the accuracy drops. He's well written and well spoken, has an inclination to mouth out words when he re-reads his sentences.

Someone knocks on the subject's bedroom door and he gets up to answer it. There's a conversation with his male roommate, their voices quiet as they talk about rent and groceries. He disappears into the hallway and leaves the door cracked behind him.

Even scrolls back to the seventh page of the term paper the subject is working on, corrects a minor grammatical error for him and is back to his stopping point before he returns with a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

The subject has a quirky shaped lips that dip down in the center.

The subject has green eyes.

\- - -

By the time Even had graduated secondary school, he'd been convicted of seven felonies and and two misdemeanors. He'd spent that summer with a bracelet around his ankle and zero access to a computer and a brand new bottle of pills that were supposed to keep him on the straight and narrow.

There had never been any ill intent to Even's extracurricular activities. Not when he'd hacked into the RAF or Visa or stuck his fingers into the royal family's email servers. When Even was ten, he became fixated on picking locks. The locks just got bigger and more virtual as he'd grown older. 

It had been late August, the summer after Even's graduation, when a man had knocked on his door. He'd called him Bullseye and it had been the first time in months that anyone had called Even by his handle. The man had handed him a full ride to UCL, a fast track through the cyberterrorism program, pointed out sometimes you had to use a criminal to catch a criminal, and had taught Even the meaning of the word expunged.

Even had been in front of a keyboard with the itch under his skin finally easing off before the ink on the contract had even begun to dry.

\- - -

Four weeks. Even's logged nearly four hundred hours and doesn't have much to show for it. He's beginning to think this is a training wheels assignment. A double blind experiment, that his employer is putting him through a sort of test. It's happened before.

A formal report is due, one that will be read by people higher up on the food chain, those who decide who gets watched and when. He writes it up as easy as filling in the names on a form letter, sure to include the two times the subject bought weed, a full list of all internet activity, financial statements and phone records.

There are things that Even doesn't include in his report, like how he knows exactly what Isak will order on the Wednesdays when he eats in the cafeteria at school, or the awkward way he responds to that one barista who always flirts with him at the cafe close to his house. Like the pained expression on his face when his mother texts him a bible verse in the small hours of the morning, or the different sort of pain he feels when his friends try to drag him out to a Friday night party in order to set him up.

Even has researched every bible verse. He has cross-referenced everyone in Isak's small group of friends. The same goes for his classmates and the people he lives with. He can rattle off their names, ranks and serial numbers as easily as he could state his own birthday. 

He knows how many beers it takes before Isak's speech begins to slur. He knows that Isak is half-way through the third season of Narcos and that he likes to suck on his own fingers when he gets himself off and how he often falls asleep on his back but will inevitably flip over to his stomach after an hour or so.

Every single meal he's eaten, each song he's listened to, every time he's rushed out the door and forgotten his keys. All of it meticulously catalogued and notated but what Even can't remember is when he stopped defining him as a subject. The exact moment Even began to think of him by name.

\- - -

Another Friday night that's slipped into Saturday morning. Another party. Even's spent it in Isak's back pocket. He's heard him get stoned, open can after can of beer, heard his off-key, not quite genuine laughter.

The whole night, Isak's been a small blue dot on a map, but he's moving now, getting on the tram by himself. Isak pulls out his phone and Even clicks over to visual and screenshare, makes the map small and shoves it to the lower left corner of his monitor.

Isak's eyes are red and glassy and it makes the green that much more vivid. He's swaying a little more with the movement of the tram than he usually does as he scrolls through Instagram, gets stuck for a while on what NASA's been up to, absently pulling his lower lip between his thumb and first finger. Even drops his hand when he realizes he's mirroring him.

They walk home together, along two blocks and up the stairs and into Isak's bedroom, where he boots up his laptop and takes Even to bed with him. Shirtless, spotty shoulders. A drop of water he thoughtlessly wipes from his chin when he misses his mouth a little. Heavy eyelids as he begins to drift off.

His roommate comes in to check on him, mentions that he's home early for a Friday night and Isak smiles. Small and subdued and Even recognizes it, the loneliness in it. It's the last thing Even sees before Isak closes his laptop.

Even switches over to Isak's phone. It's somewhere near to him. Screen down. Nothing to see, but Even can still listen to him breathe.

\- - -

A girl is speaking with Isak in a quiet, library whisper. Packed shelves stretch up behind him and Even can almost smell them. Old paper and glue and leather or canvas book covers. The girl is pretty, long hair and an easy grin. There's a lot of familiarity between them. She touches him often, glancing, fluttering fingers on his hand and his upper arm, asks him about his family.

Even takes a screenshot and scans it through facial recognition. Gets a name: Eva. They went to secondary school together. Social media links her to Jonas a few years ago, and Even gets irritated at himself for not digging back quite far enough on Isak's best friend. He won't make the same mistake again.

She's talking about a party, about a boy she knows who's going to be there. He's into science. Isak should come. The two of them are so much alike, they might hit it off.

Isak smirks and turns it into a joke, says that putting two people like him in the same room would be so boring that it would put the whole house to sleep.

Even sits back and frowns over this fresh bit of knowledge, that Isak isn't interested in people like himself. That Isak thinks he's boring is a tragedy that borders on Euripides. He's brilliant, funny and works so incredibly hard. He's the most fascinating person Even has never actually met.

\- - -

There's a tremor in Even's thumb as it hovers over the screen of his phone. He can't make it stop. It's a fault in his coding and he doesn't have time to do a search, dive back far enough in his internal mainframe to correct it.

It's Thursday afternoon and Isak's finished with his lecture. It's the beginning of the month and Isak's flush with a recent deposit from his father so that means he's comfortable enough to blow some of it on an overpriced cup of coffee. He'll sit for a couple of hours in the cafe going through his notes and making sure he understands everything he's been taught today.

Even has two minutes. He's been planning this for nineteen days and now he only has two minutes. Isak is four meters away, standing at the end of the line, waiting his turn at the counter. A plate glass window separates them and Even's thumb is still shaking. 

Isak is counting his money and Even is slowing down by the door and Isak's cheekbones and the curls at his temples are the stuff dreams are made of and Even's touching his screen, forcing Isak's phone into a complete lockdown. Even's reaching for the door and clearing his throat to make sure his voice will work and tapping on Isak's shoulder with a hand that isn't skaking anymore.

"Is this yours?" Even asks, and holds out a gift card. "I found it on the sidewalk outside." He bought it last week. 

Isak turns around, makes eye contact with Even's collarbone then ticks his eyes upward. Live and in the flesh and he's so beautiful that it steals Even's breath away.

"It's not mine," Isak tells him, and oh god, the timbre of his voice when it's not filtered through a crappy microphone. It's deeper in person. Richer.

"In that case, maybe we should split it, spread the luck around a little." Even smiles, eyebrows up. An expression that says he's friendly, flirty, entirely harmless.

Someone comes up beside them, informs the people behind the counter that the internet is out, and Even acts surprised and irritated. He rolls his eyes, bites his bottom lip, gets a thrill when Isak fixates on his mouth while he does it.

"Looks like my afternoon just took a nosedive," Even says.

"Yeah, but we're gonna get free coffee," Isak reminds him. "The universe has a way of balancing things out."

"You look familiar," Isak says a few minutes later, when they have their coffee in hand and know each other's names and are dodging chairs, heading toward a table for two. "Do you go to the university?"

Even nods. "Film studies." A carefully chosen lie that would mainly put him on the opposite side of campus, make Isak think that they're not at all similar. He pulls Isak's chair out for him and Isak seems to like that. 

"So, arts and humanities." Isak leans forward as he says it, and curls his hands around his cup, a mirror image to Even. "I'm biology with a side order of chemistry."

Even hums, impressed. He barely has to act at all. "You must be packing some serious brain power."

"Mostly I just never sleep." Isak toasts Even with his coffee and takes a sip.

Even thinks about how Isak averages four to five hours a night. He thinks about the bags under his eyes and the mole above his mouth and how Isak doesn't pull away when Even reaches over to touch his hand.

An hour shoots by in a blink, and when a man in a utility uniform wearing a tool belt walks through the door and asks where he can find the modem, Even makes a show of running late. Before he leaves, he takes Isak's hand and writes the number to a burner phone on the inside of Isak's wrist in blue ballpoint pen.

"Old school. I like it," Isak says, then blows on the ink to dry it.

"I like _you_ ," Even dares, and is out the door and across the street before he activates Isak's phone again.

\- - -

"Bullseye. You're here." Some of the hair has fallen loose from Mikael's ponytail. He's rolled his sleeves up.

"Anything I need to know about?" Even places three energy drinks beside his set up. It's mostly for show. Isak is more than enough to keep him awake.

"Maybe." Mikael scrolls back through his logs. "Check it out. The subject went dark this afternoon. It lasted an hour."

"Any movement?" Even asks.

"Not that I could see. He came back at the same spot where he'd blipped out, but…"

"But there's no way to be sure," Even finishes for him. He'd been expecting this. "Diagnostics?"

"Ready steady on our end." Mikael shrugs. "It could be nothing. A glitch."

"Or it could be something else."

Mikael is faithful, brilliant and excellent at his job. It's a good thing that Even is better.

\- - -

Coffee becomes the thing they do. Sometimes it's beer. They meet at the bar or at school or the movie theater, never more than three times a week and Mikael doesn't suspect a thing.

Isak is grumpy and sarcastic and kind in a teenaged boy, barely legal way. He's funny and honest and glances at Even with a very specific expression when he thinks Even isn't paying attention. Warm and through his lashes, the corners of his mouth upturned only slightly. He asks all the right questions and gives all the right answers, spends a whole night going through Luhrmann's filmography after Even picks his name out of a hat when Isak asks him about his favorite directors.

He cries at the end of Moulin Rouge, might be carrying a crush on DiCaprio circa 1996. Even doesn't blame him for either of these things.

Even spends his days looking at him and his nights watching him and tells himself that compulsion is what makes him good at his job. It's what pays his bills and keeps him out of jail.

\- - -

The bar is crowded and loud and Even's charmed that Isak ditched a number of invitations from his friends to spend an evening with him instead. He's put on a nice shirt, forgone his snapback. They're at a table, on their second beer each, ignoring the basket of fried food between them.

According to Mikael, the subject is in bed asleep.

Isak is telling a story about his best friend. Jonas always plays the hero in Isak's stories and Even suspects Isak used to have a thing for him, growing up. He must have been so lonely back then. He must have wanted so much and had so little and it makes Even want to give him everything, makes him want to hold him the way he needs to be held.

There are televisions mounted on the walls. Manchester versus somebody, Even isn't really paying attention. A breaking news report cuts through in Even's periphery, and he doesn't notice it until it's too late to grab onto the details. Isak is peeling the label off of his bottle, folding it into a tiny boat and sailing it across the table toward Even.

Isak finishes his story and his beer, keeps his ankle hooked around Even's the entire time. He's formed a habit of tracing his fingertips along the fine bones in Even's hand, of ticking off the names of them with each light touch. Maybe it's a mnemonic device, another way Isak learns.

"When we first met, you said that the universe has a way of balancing itself out. Do you really believe it?" Even asks.

"I can hardly hear you in this place," Isak says. Money on the table. A strong grip around Even's wrist. "Let's go."

The nights are getting longer and it's chilly outside. Damp pavement and a fine mist is falling from the sky and there are tiny drops of water in Isak's hair, gathering on his skin. His breath is coming out in small white clouds and he laughs quietly as Even guides him into the space between two buildings, then allows Isak to walk him backward until his spine is pressed to the wall and Isak is pressed in close.

It's their first kiss. Their very first and Isak sighs sweetly into it. His nose is cold and his lips are soft and the hesitation when he sneaks his tongue into Even's mouth doesn't stick around for long. His hands are in Even's coat pockets and their fingers thread together, metacarpal, carpal, phalange, and Even's guilt is a fleeting, passing thing. 

"I never thought I'd meet someone like you," Isak says, slow to open his eyes after. "I'm lucky that I did."

"Me too," Even says. 

Isak has known Even for three weeks. Even has known Isak for much longer than that.

\- - -

Even takes Isak home, pulling out all the stops to stay hidden behind a scrambled IP address, a number of pathways and dead ends. First and foremost he's a hacker, and there's no use blaming a snake when it acts like a snake.

The room that flickers onto his screen is as familiar as his own at this point. So is the face, and Even's heart hitches at the sight of Isak, blue-tinted from the light of his screen, leaned back in his desk chair much like Even is right now. Head tipped sideways, mouth bitten red and plump, wet from chewing on it. Off screen, his hand is working, juddering movement that Even can see in his shoulder and upper arm timed to dim, fake pornstar groans coming from his laptop's speakers.

Without a second thought, Even slips his hand into his boxers. Two fingers into his mouth reaching back and back.

They don't come at the same time, but it's a close thing.

\- - -

Even takes him home. In the flesh this time. In three dimensions. Isak admires the filmmaking equipment Even's recently acquired to keep the architecture of his fiction in one piece, the enormous television that takes up almost all of one wall.

A very short while later, Even's admiring Isak spread out on his bed, real and blood hot and not at all pixelated, the weight of Isak on his tongue and the taste of him as he comes down his throat. How Isak clenches down on Even's fingers and then his cock, wraps him up in his arms and legs and holds him tightly.

Isak falls asleep sprawled across Even, starts out on his stomach and stays that way, his hair tickling under Even's chin, his hand curled against Even's chest, directly above his heart. Even's spent hours and hours listening to his deep, measured breaths but the warmth of them on his skin is unmapped territory. 

They wake up sweaty and filthy, find a few different ways to get filthier before Isak drags him into the shower. Even ends up with his forehead pressed into the tile and Isak buried in him as deeply as he can go, ends up gasping and choking on water and the three fingers Isak has shoved into his mouth.

"Even, I think I…"

The water is turning lukewarm and Even kisses the rest of the thought out of him, breaks off to say, "I know I," as something cracks open in his chest. 

For the first time in his life, he's learning what it feels like to be a real boy.

\- - -

The tram stops and a shadow falls over Even. Someone standing closer than is strictly necessary. He looks up.

"We tracked down your burner. You're really fucking good, Even." Mikael has the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up, his hands shoved in his pockets. "It took weeks to put it all together."

Even nods, keeps his mask in place. "How long do I have?"

"At maximum, a couple of hours." 

"Why are you telling me this?" Even's shutting off his phone, pulling a laptop out of his bag. He places them both on the empty seat beside him and has no intention of ever touching them again.

"Because whatever way you look at this, you're screwed." Mikael's expression is gentle, almost sympathetic. "I wanted to give you time to say goodbye."

The tram stops again and he's gone.

\- - -

He finds Isak on campus, hurrying toward his chemistry lab.

Isak's face lights up, pleased and surprised, faltering as Even doesn't slow down to kiss him, tells him to keep on walking.

"You've been under surveillance for eighteen weeks. Your phone. Your laptop. You're tapped." Even talks fast, a countdown clock ticking away in his head. A fuse burning down.

Isak staggers. Trips up. Comes to a stop and shakes off the hand Even has around his upper arm. "How do you…" he starts, then his mouth staggers, too.

"I'm done. Off the job." Even's head is crackling, too much information to spill and not enough time to wrap his tongue around hardly any of it. "I'll never watch you again. I promise." 

Confusion and heartbreak and anger and Isak's hands are balling into fists, his knuckles turning white and Even stands his ground, waiting for a hit, willing to bleed for this. Isak blinks, sucks in a deep breath. He pushes his shoulders back and lifts his chin. The look he gives Even is frosted over. A direct punch to the jaw would have hurt less, done only a fraction of the damage. 

His voice is quiet, constrained and so suddenly monotone and it doesn't make any sense. If this really is a tragedy, Isak's gone off-script. "What do you have on me?"

"Nothing. You're clean. I know you're clean." He takes a step toward Isak and Isak lets him.

"Clean," Isak repeats and it's as if Isak's putting on a mask of his own, digging up his analytical inclination, the part that will stab into a problem and won't stop until he finds a solution. "I don't even know what that means anymore." He pulls his phone from his back pocket and stomps on it twice.

It's a riddle, and Even doesn't have time for it, he's too busy picking apart the knot in his stomach, shutting down the real boy, getting ready to upload an earlier version of himself, the version that has never had anybody to say goodbye to. Saving just a small sliver and that's the part of him that steps forward, takes Isak's face between his hands and kisses him once. Only once. For good. For keeps.

\- - - 

Just one more time. Even is a liar by trade and his promises have never meant anything.

The contingency plan he kept hidden in his mattress is now stuffed into his backpack. He's running numbers in his head. He's made it through airport security, but there's an eighty percent chance he'll never step foot on the plane.

It's easy. Pathetically easy, and he doesn't have much to lose. A nixed computer. An internet connection. A few keystrokes.

Isak is sitting at his laptop. He's resting his cheek in the palm of his hand, his elbow on his desk. A suitcase is on the bed behind him, a mess of quickly tossed in clothes coughing out of it. He looks almost bored, and not at all how he looked an hour ago, when Even had shattered his heart with one strategic, truthful blow. He's watching a newsfeed. Something about a dirty bomb that was found in a train station somewhere in the states and safely disarmed. 

Isak sighs, regretful, then sits back in his chair and drops his hands into his lap. There's a red mark on his cheek from his palm. He looks directly into the camera and smiles that smile Even will have to learn to live without. 

"Oh, Bullseye, there you are," Isak says, and the shape of his smile changes, turns sharp. "You are such a liar." He holds up a phone and points its screen at the camera, and Even sees a livefeed of his own face staring back at him. "Lucky for you, I am too. Now run." 

\--end

 

thanks for reading!


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